Fairy Godmother Tales

To start off my spring break this year (just over a week ago), I headed to South Dakota to visit my godchildren. They are (almost) 7 and 4 years of age. The eldest, "D", has called me her fairy

godmother since she was very little and has shared in my love of glitter and all things shiny, much to her father's dismay--sorry, I'm not sorry Mike! :) She was the very first to announce that my favorite color was "glitter" when she was maybe 3-4 years old, even though it really is silver. The younger, "J", is your typical 4-year-old boy...far more interested in catching bugs than learning his letters, shapes, and numbers. He's one of the busiest boys I know who will someday become a storyteller of some sort for his profession.

Maybe I could have a better outfit too...?

Just thought I'd share some funny tales from my quick trip!

J: "My old friend the clam hugged me and that's how I know so much about shells."

(pauses for dramatic effect)

J: "But he washed away to make new friends."

***I also learned about his "old friend" the owl and several other old friends that are also animals. I'm convinced in another life that J was actually an old man in the South who sat in a rocking chair on his front stoop/in front of the town grocery store/cafe and just shot the breeze all day telling stories of his good ole days. The kids has some serious tales....***

D: (telling me about the tooth fairy coming a few weeks ago) "She brought me $15. She has long red hair like me, but long like Rapunzel. She's also little."---for the record, I am confident that she didn't bring $15, but that fairy still pays much better than my tooth fairy did!

J: "I'm not ornery. I give myself good ideas."

Me: "I'm tired. You wore me out today."

D: "It's what kids do!"

(adults all chuckle)

D: "Well it is..." (in an exasperated [almost] 7-year-old voice)

To top off the whole weekend, we went to watch Cinderella in theaters. Talk about fairy godmother! I don't know that I will be able to magically provide a pumpkin carriage to the ball for either of those two, but maybe our fun art projects, cooking, and playing together along the way will make up for my lack of fairytale magic. I'm so happy I was able to spend some time with them last weekend! 

Hooray, I'm a guest blogger!

I guest blogged today. Well actually I guest blogged last week, but I finally got the courage to post it today. Or did I really guest blog when it was a requirement of being part of the cohort that went to the UN Status on the Commission of Women? I don't know. Point is, I have blogged! You can find it here. Or you can just read it below. [Side note: it was really weird for me blogging under a different domain...I felt like I had to watch what I wrote more than I do here because it was for a different audience or something. Definitely a good experience though.]

Breaking the silence. Dismantling the stigma. Erasing the shame.

(Trigger Warning: This post discusses sexual assault)

When preparing to come to the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), I thought I knew what I’d hear about. I’m currently a public health student in the area of maternal and child health so I spend my days considering social determinants of health such as poverty, access to food and healthcare, educational attainment, local laws pertaining to women and their enforcement (or lack thereof), gender-based violence such as sexual assault and domestic violence, and the unique health disparities of women in conflict zones.

In all of these areas, and more, women and girls face inequalities when it comes to health. They do not have the rights or access to make decisions about their own bodies in many cultures. They are disproportionately affected by hunger and poverty. In some places they still cannot own land or make financial decisions. In far more places than I care to think about, women and girls are used in war situations as objects for gaining power.

I knew I would hear reiterations of the same ideas while at CSW. What I did not realize was how focused this year’s events would be on the violence and sexual assault that women and girls face all over the world on a daily basis.

In my other life at home, I do a lot of work in my community with sexuality education and sexual reproductive health. That has taken different forms over the past decade, but right now it’s predominantly concerned with the epidemic rates of both chlamydia and gonorrhea in Douglas County, Nebraska, where I currently live. Along with many other community partners, our primary focus is within the incarcerated population because they experience many forms of health disparities before, during, and after incarceration. 

That means that I spend my time in and out of the youth correctional facility (ages 8-18) and the adult jail (age 18+) doing age-appropriate, evidence-based, medically-accurate presentations about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), sexual assault and consent, and STD transmission and prevention methods.

We already have conversations with the youth detainees about consent, but as I was very poignantly reminded at CSW that 1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted by the age 18 and 1 in 3 in her lifetime. This is not including the 1 in 6 males (or likely more due to underreporting) who experience sexual violence before the age of 18 in the United States.

The conversations I’m having are clearly not enough.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I definitely do no think that all persons detained are rapists or have sexually assaulted someone. Similarly, I know for a fact that every person who has sexually assaulted a person is not detained.

But I do know that I can do something to further the conversation surrounding consent. Even if within my own tiny sphere. I don’t know explicitly how to alter the curriculum we are using, but I now head back to the literature to figure out what has worked in other communities. And I will also expand these conversations to the adult inmate population–we know that we are never too old to learn something new.

While the work that I do is not directly linked to a church or congregation, it is linked to my faith and concern for justice. That does not mean that the Church cannot be a leader in impacting the problem. In fact, I wish there were more congregations that were explicitly addressing these concerns. There are greater conversations about what is “good” touch and what is “bad” touch, good/bad relationships, partner negotiation, and what qualifies as consent (and also what doesn’t qualify as consent) that the people in your pews are aching to hear…they just may not express it for fear of the silence, stigma, and shame surrounding the topic.

I challenge you now, Church, to be the voice for good. Preach and teach on those texts in the Bible dealing with violence (yes, they are in there). Discuss those feelings, insecurities, and fears…be sure to get at the root causes. But most of all, I challenge you to be a safe space and provide healing for those who are victims of violence of any kind.

Let’s break the silence, dismantle the stigma, and erase the shame.

Jenny Sharrick, Omaha, Nebraska

UN Commission on the Status of Women

[Once I kick this sinus infection (it's going to happen...even if I have to sleep for the next gazillion hours and bathe in antibiotics...it WILL happen), I will post summaries of all of the sessions I went to. For now, I leave you this...]

The group that headed to NYC last week to the UN has their own blog. YOU can read it. The people that I spent my week with are amazing. They truly are. I am humbled to be in their presence and to learn from and reflect with them. Our reflections from while we were there and some from after the experience are/will be posted there. If you're interested in what millennials have to say about being part of the Church and being involved with justice work, you WANT to read this stuff. It's so rich and awesome!

If you want to see a pictorial and social media update of the things that happened, look at our Storify. You'll get quotations from sessions we were in and pictures of the things we were involved with. Plus a more spread out point of view than if you just read my blog!

But more to come...so much left to process though. And naps to be had first :)

#ELCAWH15

Hope Evangelical (one of our hosts)

In January I went to San Francisco for a gathering of ELCA World Hunger leaders (yeah…a little slow on the blogging about it, but what else is new this year?). This meeting happens every 18 months at various locations throughout the country. As soon as I heard where it would be, I was SUPER excited to go…Nebraska in the winter is usually terrible. Unfortunately for me, the weather in Nebraska was actually pretty warm the weekend I missed. Oh well, I survived anyway!

Sanctuary at Hope Evangelical

In addition to the normal meeting that they usually have, this meeting also included the other young adults that are in the young adult cohort. This group of people is the group that is going to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women later this week. Some of the group also goes/will go to the International AIDS Conference every two years.

If you'd rather see how the conference went instead of reading my babble about it, find our storify page. Storify is a super cool tool if you're running a meeting/gathering/conference/super awesome super bowl party where you can pull in social media posts using your hashtag (#ELCAWH15 in this case), to see a visual representation of the event. There will be a storify for my trip to NYC later this week too that you can check up on!

Ministry Fair! This was the setup for "Bountiful Harvest"
--a food co-op in Omaha out of First Lutheran

Bird of Paradise
(my favorite flower!)

The theme of the event was "Congregations for Change: We are Church Together". There were large group sessions, small group training sessions, a ministry fair (showing the cool projects that people around the US were doing to combat hunger), and, of course, plenty of worship experiences sprinkled throughout. 

Two of the coolest experiences of the weekend were the neighborhood walks and the small group time we had as a young adult cohort. I will probably talk plenty about the young adult cohort in the coming weeks, so I'll skip that for now.

Neighborhood Walk art

The neighborhood walks were very interesting. The idea behind the walks was that we are so familiar with the things in our own neighborhoods that we hardly ever take time to truly see them for what they are. We don't see the shortfalls because we are think we are familiar with the area...but we actually become blinded. But even more so, we don't see the potential for changing those shortfalls. We need new eyes to assess the area and its assets.

Walked through part of Oakland
to meet-up wit part of the group

With issues of hunger specifically, we think "Oh there are people that are hungry in big cities/Africa/developing countries," but we aren't so great at identifying hunger in our own areas. This was a dedicated time to discover hunger in our "own" area. Definitely a cool idea and provided lots of time for reflection.

We split into groups and toured different churches/ministries in the San Fran/Oakland area based on our interests. I chose to tour "Night Ministry" which is out of St. Mark's ELCA. It's a 50-year-old collaborative ministry for those who are homeless or out for a night-on-the-town in the Tenderloin (and thereabouts) district in San Francisco.

There are two parts to the ministry: 1) Night Ministers that walk the area each night from 10 pm - 4 am, 2) crisis intervention help-line counselors that answer phones on the crisis line each night during the same time period. Additionally, they have a weekly outdoor worship service for anyone that wants to come. They have not missed a single night shift in the 50 years they've been in operation. 

"Remember Them"
Sculptures of several humanitarians

"Remember Them"

"Remember Them"

Miracles of Faith Church
We had a sack lunch and impromptu
(and passionate) worship service here.

The pastor I followed (there are 6 or so on call every night) was ordained in the UCC and also leads worship for an ELCA congregation and weekly prayer with some Franciscan nuns. He was well known by the men and women who lived in the area. We heard from other groups that many people were asking for him as well. The ministry has truly been a ministry of presence in the area. Sometimes the only thing a person needs is someone to listen. Some of the people we met shared their stories about what happened in their lives to lead to homelessness, some just said hello. Regardless, encountering people was amazing.

by-the-cup brewed coffee
nom.

Besides the neighborhood walks, we also had some training sessions on advocacy, fundraising, sustainable development goals, networking, and others. We also used some of the resources that the ELCA puts out about hunger education. A very well-rounded conference to touch on each of the tenets of ELCA World Hunger: Relief, Education, Advocacy, Sustainable Development, Organizing, and Networking.

made-to-order ice cream sandwich at the amazing #CreamNation
The best thing I've ever had (maybe).

St. Mark's (another host)

On the final day, the Young Adult cohort and some ELCA staff members took part in the MLK Day march. Whoa. That was super powerful. I've never been part of a political march like that...the closest thing I've come to is the Take Steps Walk for Crohn's and Colitis or the AIDS Walk every year. But this was far better attended than either of those walks. I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

MLK Day march 

We are hungry for justice. 

You can see the line curving to the left across the bridge.

Cohort @ MLK Day march

MLK Day march

MLK Day march

Ecumenical worship at the end of MLK Day march